he axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the
geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in
places is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the
attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway
in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream. At short intervals are
vast numbers of grave mounds with tablets and arched gables of well
dressed stone. No habitations of the living are within miles of them, a
forcible illustration of the devastation that has ravaged the district.
This was still the famine district. In the open uncultivated fields
women were searching for weeds and herbs to save them from starvation
till the ingathering of the winter harvest. Their children it was
pitiful to see. It is rare for Australians to see children dying of
hunger. These poor creatures, with their pinched faces and fleshless
bones, were like the patient with typhoid fever who has long been
hovering between life and death. There were no beggars. All the beggars
were dead long ago. All through the famine district we were not once
solicited for either food or money, but those who were still living were
crying for alms with silent voices a hundred times more appealing. When
we rested to have tea the poor children gathered round to see us,
skeletons dressed in skins and rags, yet meekly independent and
friendly. Their parents were covered with ragged garments that hardly
held together. Many wore over their shoulders rude grass cloths made
from pine fibre that appear to be identical with the native petticoats
worn by the women of New Guinea.

Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile
plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large
Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.

All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty
hills, which it was hard to realise were the peaks of mountains 10,000
to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous
market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an
excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese
characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese
tourists on the quality of the fare.

In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon
had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same
way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the
ail